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Birthright Palestine

A Lecture by Dana Yahalomi

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

During the lecture Dana Yahalomi, Public Movement Leader, will present key strategies developed by the movement alongside examples of previous actions. In the last six years, Public Movement has explored the regulations, forces, agents, and policies, formations of identity and systems of ritual which govern the dynamics of public life and public space. The Movement was founded in December 2006 by Omer Krieger and Dana Yahalomi, who later assumed sole leadership in 2011.The lecture will conclude and open into discussion with the recent action SALONS: Birthright Palestine? (February - April 2012, New Museum, NYC) which used the phenomenon of Birthright Israel(1) in order to raise questions about nationality and heritage, as well as about the politics of tourism and branding. In a series of performative public discussions, each adopting existing formats of discursive forums, different publics presented and debated upon related questions and issues that would inform, affirm and/or oppose the proposal to initiate a Birthright Palestine program.

Public Movement is a performative research body which investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. It studies and creates public choreographies, forms of social order, overt and covert rituals. Among Public Movement's actions in the past and in the future: manifestations of presence, fictional acts of hatred, new folk dances, synchronized procedures of movement, spectacles, marches, inventing and reenacting moments in the life of individuals, communities, social institutions, peoples, states, and of humanity.

1 Birthright Israel is a 10-day free trip for Jews between the ages of 18 to 26 who travel around Israel together on a bus. It was founded in 1999, sponsored by the government of Israel and American Jewish philanthropy. Over 300,000 people have participated in the program since its founding. Birthright Israel was founded in the hope to address the following concerns: detachment of diaspora Jews to the state of Israel, an increase in intermarriages between Jews and non-Jews and a need to sustain the Israeli-American Lobby, which for years served Israel with political advocacy and a great source of funding.